Deciding on Features...
This is course 2 of 5 in Choosing an Online Donation Provider
Now that you've decided what kind of provider, Aggregator or Gateway, you'll need to decide what features are important to your organization. The wide variety of features and varying levels of safety make it difficult to find a provider that balances both the features your organization will need, with the highest available level of protection for your organization and your donors.
One of the easiest ways to choose a provider is to decide what features are important to your organization and then choose the provider with the highest level of security at the best price. Make sure the feature set you choose is the best option for your organization. Donation University has created the following list of features with accompanying questions so you can:
1. Choose your necessary features
2. Know which questions to ask to determine if your needs will be met
3. Ensure they have the proper safety level to protect your donations.
An easy way to narrow down the features important to your organization is to print this page and highlight which features you want. Then ask each donation provider if they can support your perfect donation system with the security and PCI Compliance to keep your information safe.
Donation Features
- It is important that my donors have the ability to make one-time and recurring donations.
- I want to let donors specify restrictions to direct funds to a specific purpose.
- I want to have the donation provider automatically email donors a custom receipt that I can edit at any time and that can be used for tax purposes.
Recurring Donations (Pledges/Tithing)
- Donors should be able to set up their own recurring donation without involving the organization.
- Donors must be able to cancel their recurring donation automatically without involving any of my administrative staff.
- It is important that I be able to update and manage recurring donations to replace expired or lost credit cards.
- I want my bookeepers and accountants to have detailed reports showing exactly what has been pledged to my organization over the next few months or years.
- My recurring donors should get a custom emailed receipt every time a transaction occurs, not just when they set up the recurring donation initially.
Event Management
- Events should collect information I can specify for each donor so event management is easy.
- Separate receipts for each event must be possible and customizable by my organization.
- I would like event specific tools to cut down on administrative time and effort. Tools that let me download data and sort it any way I choose.
- If any part of my event changes, I want the ability to mass-email only the attendees of that event to inform them of the change.
- Specific limits on the number of tickets or packages is important, the online system should know when my event is sold out to prevent overbooking.
- It is important that I can set up all my events at one time and let the system know when to start and stop selling tickets so I don't have to worry about it througout the year.
Payment & Disbursement Options
- Visa, MasterCard and Discover are a must. I would also like to take American Express and eChecks/ACH Transfers.
- My organization's name on the credit card and bank statement is a must.
- I do not wish that anyone else have possession of my organization's funds. It should go directly into my organization's bank account.
- I do not wish to wait weeks or months, it is necessary that my funds be deposited in about 48 hours.
Virtual Terminals
- I would like a Virtual Terminal for taking online donations over the phone or in person, and at events.
- Manual event registrations are important, sometimes I discount prices or give free tickets.
Reports
- Custom reporting is important. I would like to create my own reports that will show the data I need.
- My bookkeepers and accountants need monthly statements that detail every transaction and every fee so they can easily balance the books.
- I want the ability to download all data in properly formatted files for one-click import into popular programs like Quickbooks and Peachtree, or even for political reporting to the FEC.
-
Statistics showing where donors are geographically, average amounts, card types and most popular features of my form would be helpful.
Management Options
- I want instant access to an Administration Area where I can change anything about my donation system..
- Sending changes to a company and waiting for someone else to complete them is not acceptable. I would like the ability to do things myself.
- If I get stuck, I don't want to pay for extra support. I'd like unlimited phone and email support included.
The text portion of Qgiv's Donation University is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.